Newsarama has an interview with writer James Tynion IV about the newest crossover between DC and IDW (following on the heels of Green Lantern/Star Trek). This one focuses on Batman and…The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What follows is an excerpt from that interview:

Newsarama: James, you’ve written Batman before, but this is a really different situation for him, isn’t it?

James Tynion IV: Oh yeah. This project is like a fanboy dream come true, and being able to put such iconic characters like the Turtles in front of Batman. But yeah, this is a crazy situation, but Batman is familiar with crazy situations. But all of the sudden having a bunch of teenage turtles running around Gotham City is a situation he was not anticipating in any way.

Nrama: Let’s back up to how this project came together. You said it was a dream come true. How did it come about?

Tynion: From what I understand, this is something that’s been a dream project on all fronts — like, Nickelodeon has the rights to the Turtles, IDW does the Turtles comic books and DC has Batman. These days everyone’s a fan of the Turtles. This has been an institution in comics and the pop culture world for, literally, my entire lifetime. DC had some other crossovers with the Star Trek property at IDW, and that opened the door to conversations about this crossover. So the conversation started, and DC and IDW signed off. I remember I was at C2E2 this year when I got the email from Jim Chadwick at DC asking if this was something that I would be at all interested in. I was completely floored, because the idea of this crossover is, like, it’s too good to be true. And it’s a first. Back in the ’90s, there were lots of different comic crossovers from lots of different properties, during that era, but this is a crossover that has never happened before.

And it’s also very natural. When you look at the Turtles, their roots — their comic book roots in particular — they come very much from Frank Miller, and Batman of the modern era comes very much from Frank Miller. The Turtles were a bit crazier expression of that. But there is a natural core center that you can take them back to, which is that — you know, Batman is also a ninja. Batman was trained in a very similar way to these Turtles. Also, Batman has a huge legacy of working with young, teenage heroes, and trying to shape them to become something better. So it was a very natural fit.